Interview: Enter Shikari, June 18th 2008, Graz, Austria

Band members:
Rou - Vox/Electronics
Chris - Bass/Vox
Rory - Guitar/Backing Vox
Rob – Drums

I had so much fun that day. The hall in Graz is fortunately very well organized, and with the help of Enter Shikari´s tour manager I was in, in no time despite the fact that we only got there a bit before 6 and there were huge lines of people outside. I got led backstage where I finally got to meet Keith (he´s such an amazing, easy to talk, easy to arrange things with, guy). He sent someone to get the guys but they could only find Chris - but I didn´t mind that at all, it was really lovely talking to him. Despite his young age he´s got a lot of miles on him with this band and is quite a professional when it comes to interviews. But still he remains very much down to earth and is really easy to chat with.

We sat down at a table in this small booth on this really hot humid day and started the interview. I ask if I can turn my voice recorder on cause I´m a really slow writer and he says yeah, sure and our chat continues with him describing how he spent the day pretty much being bored and waiting for the evening to come…

Romana: So you got here early already?
Chris: Yeah, I woke up here about 11, then got some lunch about 2, then sound checked, then strolled around for a bit…
R: … lots of waiting in between…
C: Yeah. Lots and lots of waiting. I´ve walked around the venue about ten times..
R: And it´s a big place!
C: It´s big place, yeah. This is my latest attraction (shows me his football)… That´s keeping me sane.
R: So you at least have something to do. Ok, so I have some questions for you, I hope it´s something interesting.
C: Cool.

R: I was checking your website, your MySpace and some interviews about you and at some places it says you are in the studio, working on your second album and then on MySpace you have lots of dates listed. (a/n: info is from June when the interview took place)
C: Yeah.
R: How do you manage both?
C: We were meant to be writing, only this was a bit too good of an opportunity to miss, to play to 10.000 people each night. We couldn’t really say no, really. But, I don’t know, we’ve always been a touring band, so we were finding that being in one room writing for a long period of time we were getting very stressed anyway because we have a lot of urges to get on the road and play live shows.
R: You need energetic life style.
C: Exactly, yeah.
R: Even if it gets boring with all the waiting.
C: Yeah, at times, but there is something about waking up in a different city each day. You grow to love that. Once you get home it´s even worse. Because here there at least there is something you are meant to be doing at some point, you know, there is the sound check or there is lunch… when you get home there is like what to do now, where is lunch – make it yourself!
R: It´s a shock.
C: Exactly.

R: That was my second question. Like how do you even get used to it. End of touring and then suddenly nothing. What do we do now.
C: It takes a good three, four days at home doing nothing before you can finally start getting used to it again.
R: Adjust to your regular life.
C: Exactly.
R: Well actually your regular life is on tour…
C: Yeah… well to get back into normal world.

R: One of you once said that you’ve got your whole life to write your first album and only a month to do your second one…
C: I think we all say it cause it´s such a daunting fact… obviously the fist album we did, you know we toured and we wrote and we were at home and we didn’t have as many shows. So now, we´re just put in a room and expected to write another album which has got to stand up to everything we´ve done as a band so far…
R: And better…
C: And better, yeah. It´s got to be a step above, so yeah, it is quite scary.
R: More pressure I guess.
C: Yeah… It is. I mean I remember at one point I was getting really depressed because I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and… I knew how I wanted it to sound in my head but I couldn’t get it to sound like that, you know. This is just me talking about my bass but I think all the guys are going through a similar thing at different stages…
R: It can get very frustrating…
C: Oh yeah, yeah. You know some days you have a very good day, you do a lot of work and other days you do nothing.
R: But it´s like that with most things I guess.
C: I guess, yeah. We kind of found out you can´t force creativity, it comes when it comes.

R: Your first album, you had to release it under your own label, which you first had to create…
C: Yes.
R: Because no one wanted you, or?
C: Erm, essentially yes.
R: No one fit your ideas, nothing like you wanted it?
C: Erm, when we first made the label it was because we had no other option. And then as a few moths went on and we started playing festival shows and more people started to hear about us like in the industry… I mean, we knew we were ready to start releasing music, we knew we had fans that would buy it. So we were prepared so it was more in the way if no one was gonna do it for us, we´re just gonna do it ourselves. But as months went on, then major labels started coming on to us. And now we were at this predicament because we´d done all this work and we were in a good place and… And all the majors they weren´t offering us what we wanted. It wasn’t enough to give our copyrights away, we wanted a bit more, you know. Because we already had things working, we had a release strategy and we knew what was happening. To bring someone else in who might just mess it up…
R: And take the credit for what you already did.
C: Exactly. We weren´t happy with that so yeah, that’s the main reason we stayed with our own label.
R: Smart. And now if other bands follow you, you´ll start a revolution of some sort.
C: (laughs) Maybe. I mean it´s not like we didn’t have any help. We have our publisher, which is a major publisher and as well it´s only in the UK that we have out own label. Cause I think it´s hard enough for us to do it by ourselves in UK, but to do it all across Europe and America and Japan… it´s just too big.
R: You can stop being a band then and just be a label.
C: Yeah, exactly.
R: You´ll do that when you´re 70.
C: Yeah. There´s plenty of time to be a label.
R: And then you´ll put other major labels out of business.
C: That´d be nice. (laughs)

R: Would you also say that internet was a big help with promotion? You have 200.000 friends on MySpace alone. (a/n: again, info from June, when the interview was done)
C: Yeah, massive, massive help! I mean… a lot of press has described our success has come from MySpace or the internet. I don’t really think that´s true. I think our success came from touring lots and lots and lots. Under the radar of the industry and building up a foundation. Then we had the internet for those fans to go to. And we use that as our forum, as our mailing list, as our way to talk to them.
R: And other people got to know you through that then.
C: Yeah. And through a word of mouth and through seeing things on MySpace and Youtube and things like that. People find out.

R: Your fans aren´t only teenagers, I mean, you do have a solid fanbase but you also have older fans. I read that an 80 year old actress June Brown came to quite a few of your shows. I don´t know her very well, but.. impressive!
C: (smiles) Oh yeah, she´s very, very famous in England. She used to come to the shows a long time ago because we used to have a friend who was a driver for the BBC and he used to drive her around and he always used to go on and on about us and he brought her with him. She was great fun actually. I remember this one gig in UK and it was about 400 kids there, ages 14 to 21 and then June Brown in her 70´s comes along. I remember at the end of the gig, she´d been drinking wine sherry all night and there was a great couple of 18 year old kids there all sat around the table and then June like kneeling on the floor… She´s like so young at heart.
R: That´s really cool. You´ve got the coolest fans.
C: (laughs) Yeah.

R: Do you prefer touring alone, or supporting other bands or doing festivals?
C: Erm… Each have their bonuses. For example, festivals are great fun because they´re always very manic, you know. You get 15 minutes to do your show. You don’t have a sound check, you just got on stage, you don´t know what´s it gonna sound like, you just go for it. And there´s like panic, absolute panic. Supporting someone like Linking Park is great fun because there´s no pressure at all. You know, no one knows us, they´re all here to see Linkin Park and we have nothing to lose essentially. So that’s great fun. And as well, we don’t have to play for long. Small sets, over quickly. But then doing our own show… I guess you get the biggest buzz at your own shows because they´re your fans, everyone knows the lyrics, everyone’s going mental. They´re all fun. All of it.
R: And I guess in UK you can´t play small show, like for 400 people anymore…
C: It´s becoming more and more tough. Which is annoying because essentially that´s what we started off doing. That´s how we got to where we are and we really enjoyed those shows, too. So we do still occasionally do a small show. But then it´s followed by some bigger shows as well. Cause now we have sound guys, you know, and crew, they all need to be paid… So we can´t really afford to do small shows or we lose money. Yeah.
R: But when you go abroad, where people don´t know you yet, you can…
C: Start again yeah. Like going to America for the first time. It´s always like back to the first…
R: Small clubs.
C: Yeah, Exactly. And you get to make the first impression again. Which is always fun.

R: When you started, did you dream of playing with someone like Linkin Park, or other huge bands, or did you just start for fun?
C: Erm. Yeah. At first we started just for fun. Just to play music. Cause we enjoyed it. There was always an idealistic dream that… it would go, that this could be our life. But up until a certain point it was never that realistic. I remember one day our singer turned to me, getting annoyed, saying this is going nowhere. So at that point we decided to invest in a van and we went touring. And again and again and again. And then we started to believe it was possible cause we saw people´s reactions. And we went back to a place and more people had come. There´s been an increase of people each time so… Then we started to believe. But I never thought we´d be able to tour in Japan, Australia, America off one album. I never thought that.
R: Not many bands can do that.
C: No, no. We were very lucky to be able to do that.
R: I guess you were just doing what you love and didn’t star with a goal of becoming a big successful band. You were doing what you like doing and invested a lot of energy in it. And success just comes then.
C: Yeah. Totally. I mean I remember thinking a few years ago… There´s a band called A Hundred Reasons, the UK band who were one of our favorite bands growing up and I always remember saying to the guys like if we can get as big and Hundred Reasons I´d be a hundred percent happy, that would be the perfect level to get to and earlier, few months ago they supported us on our tour and that was like wow, this had changed.
R: Wow, nice. I guess you stepped up.
C: Yeah, well, I guess we are kind of at the same level now that they were then. Which is good.

R: Really cool. So apart from Linkin Park and all the other big bands you´ve already played with, is there anyone you would still really like to share the stage with?
C: Well there was always Rage Against the Machine but then luckily we managed to do the Big Day Out Festival and Novarock and… The Big Day Out festival is stretched all over across Australia so we did Melbourne, Perth,… lots of places. So I´ve managed to see them lots of times now. Erm… who else… they were one of the biggest. Oh yeah, maybe Radiohead would be very cool.

R: You can still do that. So since you´ve toured all over the world practically already, is there still any place you especially want to go to, like India or…
C: Yeah! Well everywhere. We´ve never been to Russia, haven´t been to South Africa… erm…
R: South America?
C: Yeah, South America as well. Mexico and… yeah. We need to get to there. And Brazil would be wicket. Lots of places. We are by no means done.
R: You just started.
C: Yeah.

R: I also read that you were the second unsigned band (after The Darkness) that sold out Astoria (a/n venue in London). What was that like? How did it happen?
C: Erm, it was a shock actually. It was… I remember that tour… The London date, the big finishing London date was meant to be at the Mean Fiddler which is right next door to the Astoria, but like half the size. And we had about 3 weeks to go and it was sold out. And our agent came to us and he was like: well why don’t I move it to the Astoria. And we were like, nah, no chance. And basically we came around because we decided that it would be better to have a venue that was a little bit empty but everyone who wanted to come could, rather than to have a sold out venue where people couldn’t get in. So we went for it and then it sold out. That was a big turning point as well because that was again another point when the major labels started looking on to us.

R: Nice. Ok, to the next question. Everyone wants to categorize you somewhere, put you in some sort of genre but I guess you can’t really be labeled like that, you just make unique music that´s a mix of what each of you likes.
C: No, we always hate… I think every band hates that. We never liked being put in a box. Because we don’t think it sounds like anything else really because… It´s not something we essentially went out to do. We didn’t form the band to say we want to sound like completely different to anyone else. It just kind of happened. But I guess the press always wants to make the next….
R: They want to put you somewhere.
C: Yeah. But that’s always gonna happen. So we just deny all of it. (he laughs) And try to get on with things.

R: That reminds me… I also read somewhere that when you were bored of answering the same questions you just started making things up.
C: (laughs): Yeah! Well that came back and started kicking us in the face because we told so many lies that when we got asked in the next interview is this true we were like I don’t know? Well it says here! And we were like: oh yeaah.
R: So you have to be a bit careful.
C: Yeah, a little bit honest.

R: I was also watching the studio blog…
C: Oh yeah, hehe.
R: I was impressed by that drum stick with the shaky thing on it?
C: Oh yeah, the egg stick!
R: Did that work, did you use it for something? Or was it just an experiment.
C: Yeah, I think it was just an experiment but we did plan to use it. I think when it comes to recording, we can do is separately, it´s just for live, we need to…
R: It sounds good. I guess creative mind starts working when you´re all locked away together in a small place…
C: Yeah. Well Rou really wants to… not just Rou, we really want to use instrumentation… like an accordion.
R: He´s gonna play it?
C: (laughs) Yeah! I mean it´s all ideas I don’t know if that will actually happen. But yeah, we have lots of ideas.
R: You could also add a harmonica or something.
C: Yeah, we have that. We´ve got everything. We´ve got little flouts and Tibetan bowls. They´re quite cool.
R: But does that work on stage?
C: Not on stage, no. In a recording, hidden somewhere, just to add a little touch. We could sample it on stage I guess but… we´ll have to see.

R: Improvise a bit. I also read that you made a song for a video game. You also play a lot of video games when you´re bored?
C: Emm, we used to a lot more. Not so much these days. But yeah, it was something; X-Box came to us and said would you be interested in doing it and were like yeah! Music to moving images. Something me and Rou studied in high school. So we knew little, little bit about it. It was quite fun. It ended up just being an electronic track. Cause we couldn’t record a full band. It came out OK. The game is really rubbish though. (laughs)

R: I´m not really that much into video games myself, I just found this interesting. What about comic books, comics, you read those a lot or not so much?
C: I don’t know… No I never really have, no. I´m not sure about the other guys to be honest.
R: Books then?
C: Books! Yes.
R: Any favorite books? Something you´re reading right now?
C: Rory is reading quite an interesting one right now, The Diceman I think it´s called. It´s about a guy who bases all of his decisions on the roll of the dice. It´s quite an interesting book. And I just read the Slash autobiography which was interesting. He just outdoes us all in terms of his intoxication. I quite like reading autobiographies. I´ve always been into how other bands did things and what their take on everything was. You hear it through the press but more and more I come to realize that what you read in the press isn’t actually true because… I mean we´ve had experience of being misquoted many, many times so you know, it´s nice to be able to have a chance to see someone else´s point of view, of how things were for them.

R: Ok. Then I just have two more questions; when you´re bored, on the road, do you ever play pranks on each other?
C: Erm, we do yeah. There´s normally between other bands rather than among us. It was more early days as well. Being in the bus together is hard. There´s one we used to do with this other band where we used to have two vans and we opened the doors going down the motorway and we´d jump across. It was really stupid.
R: And no one got hurt?
C: No, luckily. We used to hang out the door naked while going down the motorway, as well. That was quite silly. Lots of silly, silly things like that. But personal pranks… not so much.
R: You always get it back then, if you do it among yourselves. You have to do it with other bands I guess.
C: Yeah, yeah! Well we always… when someone’s in the shower, you go turn the hot tap off so it gets really, really cold, or something like that. We always do stuff like that, but never anything too bad. Cause, you know, we have to live together for months and moths. And if we´d piss each other off too much, it wouldn’t be so good.

R: Ok then, the last question; if you had to describe the other guys with one word each, what would you say?
C: Rob would have to be angry… An angry man. Hm, Rou, stubborn… and Rory… Rory´s the most laid back one. He´s… I guess I bit clumsy. But all of them, they´re all filthy! They´re all disgusting. (laughter) They have some very bad habits.
R: Ok… but I guess you´re used to it by now.
C: Yeah… It´s always nice when you walk into a lounge of a bus and see someone´s toe nail clippings on the table; oh great, cheers guys! Really nice. But we´ve been friends since primary school, we do get along very well, we know each other inside out. We kind of decided a long time ago that it´s not really worth fighting. Most of the time it lasts five minutes and than everything´s ok again.
R: So it´s not really worth it.
C: No.

R: Ok, so that´s it. Thanks. Thank you for your time, this was great fun!
C: Pleasure!

Before he left I gave him some of my very favorite sweets I brought with me and we said goodbye. I stayed around a bit longer to wait for Keith to thank him for arranging this to happen and thanks to him even ended up staying backstage all the way till Linkin Park were ready to get on stage. Awesome night. Thanks again for everything to Keith and the guys. You rock.

Enter Shikari official website and myspace!

Romana